5 outrageous projects Russia's military says it's working on

Since President Vladimir Putin was ushered into power in 2000, the Russian defense industry has certainly rekindled, but it also has steadily spewed out unsubstantiated and rather ludicrous plans about future weapons.

There are probably a number of reasons why these half-truths, exaggerations and downright lies continue to be spread.

"National pride and the cult of patriotism that surrounds Putin and his cohorts," are some of the main ones, according to The National Interest. Part of it could also be a public relations ploy — an attempt to re-legitimize Russia's weapons industry to prospective purchasers.

Whatever the reasons, there have been at least five such doozies in the last few months.

3. That its building a 115,000 ton aircraft carrier.

In 2015, Russia announced that it plans to build a 100,000 ton aircraft carrier, called Project 23000E Storm, and construction is supposedly going to begin in 2019.

However, because of Russia's defense budget cuts, and a shipbuilding industry that is probably not qualified for the task, many have labeled such plans as a "pipe dream."

And just last week, the Russian deputy prime minister, Dmitry Rogozin, said that Moscow plans to build a "huge dry dock in the Far East" that will make it "possible to create an aircraft carrier having a displacement of 110,000-115,000 [tons]."

Such a ship would be even bigger than the USS Gerald R. Ford, the biggest carrier in the world.

5. That it has nuclear 'mole' missiles planted underwater along the US shoreline.

Desmond Boylan/Reuters

In May, a former spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense wrote an article in a Russian tabloid that Moscow was "quietly 'seeding' the US shoreline with nuclear 'mole' missiles ("they dig themselves in and 'sleep' until they are given the command" to denonate.

Experts, however, seriously doubted the claim and chalked it up to another arrow in Russia's hybrid warfare quiver.